


Reunion

by elisabethjj



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lots of Angst, Seriously-Lee is angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-16
Updated: 2011-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-19 11:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisabethjj/pseuds/elisabethjj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He cannot bring himself to look around the deck because there is only one chance and he needs it to end with him looking up and seeing her unfazable smirk. If she is not here then nothing matters…<br/>(Lee’s POV on the reunion of the fleet post-'Exodus'. Spoilers for anything up to 'Unfinished Business'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunion

The flight deck is more crowded than he has ever seen it, packed with crew and officers returned to the bosom of the fleet as well as the odd Raptor-load of civilians who ended up here in the chaos. A family is reunited and its members are suspended in a bubble of the euphoria of survival and new born hope.

For these precious moments, the horrors of the occupation and the lonely desperation of those who ran from it are forgotten. There is no betrayal: the Galactica came back. For a while they will pretend not to notice how many people are not with the returnees, pretend they never stopped believing the fleet would rescue them, chant the name 'Adama!' loud enough to drown out the pain.

They look happy; exhausted, thin, older but, in this moment, filled with a joy that shines from the eyes and energises the motion of the crowd. He moves with them, overcome with emotion. The loss of the Pegasus, his own ship, the better of the only two battlestars in existence, overwhelms him. His watch says it was only twenty-three minutes ago that he ordered his crew to abandon ship and sent the Pegasus on its suicidal mission: a battlestar sized missile into the centre of the Cylon fleet.

His young and beautiful wife is at his side, squeezing his arm in elation and then breaking away to a joyous reunion with colleagues who she had wished safe but feared dead or worse for eight long months. The tears flow down her cheeks for those who she can now hold in her arms and then some for those who she realises she will never see again. He loves her in this moment, thinks her effervescent as she glories in her emotions, loving and hurting freely and openly, yet keeping her quiet dignity that defines her.

He sees that his wife is a person entirely unafraid of herself, and there is something magical in that, something that he hopes will rub off on him but knows never will. He is darker than that; he does not possess the courage to be that person anymore. Maybe he was not like that to begin with.

His wife is a true soldier and he is proud to serve with her. She was brave enough to face the horror of leaving their family and friends to the Cylons for the sake of the survival of a pitifully small human race. He, in the end, was not. When he ordered the Pegasus to jump back to New Caprica on a suicide mission to join a losing battle, she still stood unafraid by his side, accepting the likelihood of her life sacrificed on the altar of freedom with perfect clarity and every bit as much courage as a Viper pilot flying into the fray.

He is a different kind of soldier, the kind that had done too much in the name of duty and honour and has tainted his soul beyond redemption for the protection of that which he holds dear. His wife does not yet understand that concept: she sees him as someone that he is not, has not been for a long time. Someone whole, with all his heart to give and all his soul intact, fully human: but he isn't.

There is darkness in him that only he and one other know is there. The other knows it because it mirrors the darkness in her, though they wear it differently. They share the scars, have watched as the cracks appeared, as the war chipped away little pieces of each other's souls. They know the things each other has done; most done together, some of them done to each other.

She understands his horror, his self-hatred and because of this he hates and needs her and revels in her hate and need for him. Because of this he loves her with an aggressive truthfulness that he can only share with her, and sees the same love reflected brutally in her eyes when he can stand to meet them. Because of this, she cannot be his best friend, his girlfriend, his wife or his lover; she must be more than any of those, she must be part of his very being. He knows she is his balance and without her he can only give in to the darkness that relentlessly pursues them.

That is why the pride he takes in seeing a flight deck full of people he has helped save does not reach the stone wall he has built around his heart. His breathing is uneven, his heart pounds painfully and he knows that this is the moment that will define the rest of his life. He cannot bring himself to look around the deck because there is only one chance and he needs it to end with her in front of him. He needs to look up and see her step out of a Raptor and smile her unfazable smirk and for him to be able to continue his terrible fury at her. She is either here, now, or she is dead back on New Caprica. If she is not here then nothing matters; not seeing his father's proud smile, not his loving and brave wife, not the thousands of liberated humans returned home, not a bright and shiny future.

He hates her; he has hated her since she tore the last of his heart into little shreds with an apologetic half smile and a pained expression in her eyes. Hates that he understands why she did it, thinks it was probably for the best. Hates the way she left him alone; made herself half of another twosome when she was already half of one, their one. Hates that he knows marriage has not really redefined anything, that they will always be two halves of a frakked-up whole.

If he looks up and she is not there, if she has become a number, a statistic, one of those who did not make it, a memory that will slowly start to fade from the fleet's conscious mind, he cannot hate her anymore. He will have to love her and he will have nothing left to keep him going. He needs to hate her, and he needs her to be here for him to do that. He abandoned his mission and jumped back to New Caprica for the chance of saving the one person in forty-eight thousand that he needs to survive. If he looks up and she is not…

"Kacey?"

He looks up at the shrill voice of the young, civilian woman who pushes towards him from the crowd at his front and stops, looking over his shoulder, before pushing past him and saying the word louder, more wondrously. He turns instinctively to watch the civilian push towards a newly docked Raptor and as she comes to an abrupt halt in front of a thin, fierce eyed woman with long dirty blond hair and a small child in her arms his heart shudders painfully in his ribcage, once, hard.

Then she is there and it does not matter what the civilian woman is saying to her, or why her face cracks a haunting expression as the chubby toddler is removed from her arms or how he can see more war wounds in her right eye than in the Colonel's lack thereof. All of that is the concern of the man now standing at her side: her husband, who is afire with the triumph of victory and is looking at her like he thought he might never again. There's a question there but he will not ask it.

She is there in front of him, within calling distance. He can see the beginnings of a bruise on the side of her face and there is blood on her tank top. Not her blood though, he can tell by the way she moves as she shifts in towards the side of the Raptor that she is not hurt; he knew her body well in that way before any other. Her hair is so very long; she does not look like Starbuck. She didn't look like Starbuck that night on New Caprica either.

He stares for a moment, just a moment, allowing the relief to course hotly through his veins whilst his world rights itself once again. Balance is restored; he is still whole. In a heady rush his future is once again stretching out in front of him, a future with her in it. It is not over, they can still fight and hurt each other and one day they can still make it right. The loss, death and sacrifice all fades into the background now he has the only thing he needs to survive back safely. At least for today.

He hopes that all this and more is not shining in his eyes when she wraps her arms protectively around her waist and raises her head to meet his intense gaze. In an instant he sees that whatever is occupying her mind is neither him nor the man standing at her side, but when their gaze locks he has her attention. In that barest of moments, he thinks he sees something of relief, of peace, of love flicker in those lidded hazel whirlpools. It washes over him as palpably as if her soft lips had pressed against his and breathed sweet warmth into his soul. She looks down, away and the connection is broken. He is bereft; a cool knife slicing through his gut whilst the tingling warmth of her kiss still lingers. Alone on the hard desert ground in the grey morning light. Such is her power over those who love her.

He feels the familiar bitterness sting his mouth, poison his lungs and taint his mind. Balance is restored; he is still whole. The future is still there, but now so is the present. He is back in the world, the one they both inhabit, where they live and love and collide. He does not have to love her today though, not when she is real and alive and home.

As she turns into her husband's embrace so he turns his back on her and looks for his faithful wife. He knows it is too late: they are already in one another's orbit and so the dance can begin again. Everything else is ruined for him, it all pales to nothing in the face of her brilliant starlight. He breathes a sigh of relief and faces the world on the only terms he knows how.


End file.
